It was almost three years ago when I decided that I needed to quit playing in the stock market.  That's not to say that I had to stop having fun, but instead of running trading systems and playing options, I also needed a "big boy" plan for long term holdings.  The problem with three years ago is that the bull market was looking tired and putting in fresh money was looking risky to me.  Hence the dry powder.  Well, the last couple of weeks has seen a lot of my dry powder with the climax being today.  Should we have another big dip, I still have more dry powder, but it is the lowest it has been in a number of years.  I'm actually contemplating moving money from a "risk free" account into the market for more exposure, should we head down more.  Beyond that, perhaps a second or third job to support my dip buying habit. I did most of my buying when the Dow was down around 700 on the day so some of my positions are actually showing a profit on the day.  Laugh!

But in all seriousness, my long term holdings that I've been adding to slowly over the years are getting bulked up, but are still losing significantly on the year.  The nice position that I'm in is that I've always been in and out of the markets.  While I still do this, the long term holdings will likely at some point show a gain (otherwise, that would be sad).  So I need to start considering defensive options over the coming months and years.  The double shorts seem interesting, but take away dry powder.  Options are tops on the list, but I really want to understand the delta of my portfolio to hedge it cost effectively.  Again, I think this is months if not years off, but this sure beats the position a lot of people are in who were showing gains and now showing heavy losses ... especially those who bought at the top.